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Shave & A Haircut

Hyperion deployed yesterday and sadly the Hyperion Battleship does not generate its own Wormholes as I was led to believe. Which is a serious bummer. Another bummer is the transparent frills on the Thrasher and Cyclone models. I was hoping CCP learned their lesson with the Vagabond Frill Me Campaign and would stop chopping frills off our beloved ship models. Turns out this latest incarnation is nothing more than a patch bug. So look for the wingy bits to return soon™.

Something that may not return so soon is your overview. If you happened to patch early or missed the advice, you may have doomed your overview yesterday. As you may or may not be aware, one of the new things is the ability to share overview settings with other players. However, if you already have yours set-up and you logged in yesterday without touching it - you may log back in with it all mysteriously vanished.

The fix is simple and ludicrous all at the same time. Remove something, like Gates, from your overview and then put them back. Apparently this solves that bug.

I didn't have long to play yesterday, but I did try sharing my overview with someone and it didn't work. Obviously I need to take a harder look at how that new feature works, or doesn't work.

Hyperion might not have a lot to do with or impact on my own play style, which is fine, not all the patches have to be about me - but it does bring along some much needed changes, updates and whatnots. This is the third of these new breed patches and so far CCP has managed to make each of them rather interesting and meaningful.

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And now for the haircut.

Straight up. As much as I despise ECM or WCS, I in no way advocate for their banishment from the game. I would like to see projected ECM limited to Null Space and WCS operational only on Industrial and Transport ships. That is my personal belief on those modules. I will always believe that and will continue to advocate for those changes. They'll probably never happen.

When it comes to T3s I also am not advocating for their banishment. I personally believe that their inclusion on kill-mails when boosting one or more of the involved combatants would be enough to effectively nerf their use - without having to solve this apparently unsolvable problem of having them on-grid. Solo l33t pilots who use multiple link boosts would no longer get credit for solo kills when obviously they are not actually fighting solo. The fact that this is still a thing is one of the single dumbest parts of PvP in Eve right now. And large fleets who use boosts effectively wouldn't care as much about them showing up on kms.

That is an easy fix to a rather complicated problem.

Right now, if you fly thru Low Sec as much as I do, you'll soon notice that almost every system with anyone in it - also has a Legion, or a Loki, or a Tengu, or a Proteus on scan. It is rare to find a system with people in it that does not have a boosting ship on grid somewhere. This is just silliness.

As a leader of an Alliance and generally all-around awesome supporter of Eve and the community I must also admit that adding Link Boosters to kill-mails is not enough. As much as I loathe ECM and WCS at least those ships have to be on-grid with us. They are risking something. The T3 link booster is essentially risking nothing. And that is, in my humble opinion, anti-Eve.

Either put the damn things on-grid with us or give us the tools to find them and kill them. Right now, and believe me we've tried everything, it is essentially impossible to catch and punish them. Most boosting alts are positive or neutral sec status and can sit on gates, stations, and other public spaces with impunity. If they are in space they can cloak or use their natural in-bred resistances to probes. Or, you know, just be smart. Barring a stupid accident or mis-click, they are virtually invulnerable.

This is yet another example of a mechanic that might make some sense in Null Space, being totally subverted and exploited in HS and LS. The knowledge of this invulnerability has warped and tilted the op so far in the boosters favor that it has become commonplace. This needs to change for the long-term survival of Eve in my opinion.

If I am growing tired of it, then we are in some serious trouble.

Put them on kill-mails, bring them on-grid, or give me the tools I need to catch them with reasonable proficiency.

Comments

On kill mails is fine. On grid is not. Not everybody uses links to ruin your precious 1vs1's Rixx. Other people use them to fight outnumbered and you're crippling that completely if you force them on grid.

Also most pilots that used links today where once pure solo pilots, so was I. You're not fighting for justice here, you're fighting against progress. Links allow for broader engagement profiles vOv The meta has changed since 2010. It now includes links, deal with it ;-)

No it isn't. That the modus operandi of anybody out doing that in 0.0 and of every werebear in EVE (people who run DED sites in PvP fitted ships and actually fight intruders, my gameplay in EVE for over a year now).

There's a world of solo and small gang pilots outside of FW and we rely heavily on links to be able to what we enjoy doing. Forcing them on grid just destroys another playstyle and that is *not good* for the health of EVE.

Sigh. If you are using them to run DED sites then you'd have no worries about them being on-grid with you frankly. That is a rather spurious argument. As for my "precious 1v1s" being ruined, I think you have a warped sense of what that even means. I don't let links stop me from exploding ships and I fight outnumbered all the time without using links. This is just more blah blah from the 1% who have invested heavily in win-buttons, alts and expensive support that isn't ever in danger in the combat they so passionately "love".

If I have to put my links on grid I can't fight if somebody enters my PLEX as I would have no way to keep the links alive (they would have to be obscenely tanked to even survive in a 7/10 or up plex even most 6/10's). So then you basically force me to run either run away every time somebody wants to come and contest me in the PLEX.

Or To fit in such a way I can survive high end plexes without links, which means fitting purely for PvE and then i can't actually fight either.

What you are telling me is that I should be like the majority of carebears and the second anyone with ill intent shows up I should go cower behind a POS shield or in a station.Links are what enable to PvE and still also fight when people try and contest my sites.

You're just another pirate bitching he can't get easy kills because somebody went through the trouble of being able to actually fight back (since we are apparently going to go and do Ad Hominems I best join in).Plenty of those 1% (and it's a lot more the 1% I can't recall the last time I was in a FW system not filled with links) in you alliance and corp btw Rixx, you are hardly a links free organization, Ishomilken has fairly high number of link boats out on any given day, and some of those very much belong to your chaps & chapettes. Or is this one of your do as I say and not as I do posts?

p.s. you should know better then to accuse me of having no idea what a 1vs1 is like I was a solo frig pilot long before I ever owned any link alt.

I won't even go into how forcing links on grid is a nerf to small gangs and a boost to fleets, people have gone over that at length in other places. You're basically just advocating to nerf the playstyle of some so that the playstyle of others (including you) becomes a bit better.

What I am advocating for is the inclusion of link alts and boosters on kill-mails. Let's be clear here.

And yes, our neighbors use link alts in Ishomilken. Yesterday they had three of them up and running. So yes, we are often forced to provide links in order to effectively survive inside that system. I've freely admitted to that often in these pages, so that is nothing new. I am not now, nor have I ever been, anti-booster/links. So don't even try to paint me into that corner.

I do not have a link alt. Nor will I ever have one.

None of which means anything when it comes time to talk about a broken system. And the current state of alts is very much broken. If you can offer a viable alternative to on-grid boosting then I'd love to hear it. As an organization dedicated to PvP and welcoming to all players, I know exactly what impact off-grid boosting is having on our chosen play-style. And it is overwhelmingly a negative impact.

If you are ok with that then more power to you. I am not. And I will continue to advise against the propagation of broken game mechanics. As I always have.

Now, I do understand you're annoyed of T3 being an advantage over non cloakies, but I think they bring some considerable challenge in a system which one should guard (eg. Provi). And a T3 booster pilot has a lot more skill time to go through and this is some effort already versus your no risk mention.

As for the tools given to you to catch them, it's patience, it's to learn your enemies weakness, it's gate camps with experienced inceptors, bubbles, and obviously it is another booster T3 in your fleet for your own advantage.

Unlike the flying-ponies-barbie-world of WoW or to-be SC or ED, Eve online has been, is and will always be a tougher online mmo in terms of PvP. You'll have to adapt.

Dude seriously. I'm trolling you hard over on EN24, but here I don't have to be so nice. You obviously have no clue what you are talking about or who you are talking to. I would recommend that you learn some things before trying to comment again. You are only making yourself look bad.

Not really Rixx, I know what I'm talking about. I've done it all so far in terms of PvP. But I am not going to argue further for the sake that you and I are distant rl colleague. You're a good PvPer and helper for eve online, I respect and admire this, so I'll stand down my friend.

I remember one time I was in CalMil and trying to get a foothold in Oicx, and this one Russian pirate loved to drop a Gallente alt into a small plex, force the local Cals to come in to try to flush it out, then hammer it with a Crow packing God alone knows how much faction equipment, who the hell knows what sorts of implants, and a Tengu booster that was the next-best thing to unprobeable. I'd go in to try and flush the Gal out, and the Crow would point me from beyond my Condor's lock range, orbit me faster than my missiles could move, outrun me if I tried to disengage, and pound me into scrap.

One time I brought a covops prober into Oicx to try to at least get a position fix on the Tengu. Didn't work; I didn't have the skills or equipment to get the lock. And the Russian kept taunting and gloating, calling me out as a noob for my inability to overcome his overwhelming advantage.

I told him to either shoot me down or give it a rest; he told me to go [censored by CONCORD] myself.

I actually like the idea to have them on grid; makes no sense for a module to be propagating it's effects across the system. Their use is to boost the effectiveness of a fleet in fleet fights; as such, the boost they give is invulnerable, which is silly. Make it so they can be a target in a fleet fight, even though they'll be tanked to all hell and back, but still.

1) get booster ships on grid. They should be targets. This includes mining boosters.2) Return command ships to being supreme fleet boosters and downgrade T3 boosting values to the level of battlecruisers (i.e. no bonus to boosting values). T3s are meant to be more flexible than T1 or T2 flexible, not equal/better than T2s in the T2's area of specialization.3) we need a pirate battlecruiser with boost values better than T1 BC (and with item 2, better than T3) but not as good as a command ship. 4) we need a destroyer than can fit a medium size boost module, that only provide (less effective) boosts to small ships. Destroyers are to frigates what BC are to cruisers. This way we can have a booster that matches small ship gangs in terms of system movement speed. BC hulls are too slow to move with frigate fleets. If it can't be a T1 destroyer, use a T2 destroyer hull.

These are great ideas except for the mining boosts. Unless the Rorquals and Orcas get significant defensive upgrades I don't see that as viable.

Just getting the booster and logi alts on the killmails would be a terrific start. We'd all learn who the real solo players are or aren't pretty quickly and there would be a whole new source of intel on who you're really fighting.

Why should mining boosts be protected? Is it because rorquals and orcas are very expensive to replace for optimal mining results? If you want protected boosts, use a non-industrial mining booster. You can fit mining booster modules on non-industrial ships, you just don't get those top-tier results.

If no reward without risk is to be the mantra for EvE, get those boosts on grid.

I should clarify. I do think mining boosts should be treated differently and by that I mean by someone else, other than me. I try to limit my rants to subjects I know something about and, frankly, mining boosts and carebear things are beyond my scope for the most part. While I understand the mechanics I have zero experience using them. I'd much rather someone knowledgeable in the use, need and care of mining boosters weigh in on that subject.

I have been in mining fleets with orcas and even a rorqual on grid. While the rorqual was only on grid for a single fleet - we demonstrated to ourselves that this was possible (although highly risky). I agree that the extra rorqual boosts represent the pinnacle of mining, but those extra percentage points should come with substantive risks. I doubt that many will implement them, due to the risk averse nature of most miners.

However, I will advocate for a cheaper link ship to be on grid providing lower yield points than an orca as an acceptable risk management play in more dangerous space. Folks just seem to ignore putting industrial links on a command ship or t3 as an option. The biggest bang for the buck comes from the mining foreman mindlink, and it can be used quite well on a sleipnir.

I believe all boosts should be required on grid, even industrial boosts. The only condition I require for mining boosts is that they allow Exhumers to fit links (heck, make the bonus not really significant). The orca is quite useless in a belt with only a 50k m3 ore hold, and the Rorqual is such a high value target it screams gank me. Let miners support themselves without requiring a dedicated alt to fly a cap ship. Is it really that hard to allow boosts to fit on an Exhumer and give each one an extra high-slot?

You forget that the Orca has 2 other bays. This brings it total holding capacity to ~100km3 for temporary storage while a hauler moves between station and belt. Not everyone in the op has to have mining lasers on active all times. The idea should be to minimize movement from the belt to the station to drop off the goods.

Mmmm yeah, ever tried to get PvP'ers to hang out and guard mining ops? Having flown as both the hunter and the hunted in this scenario, I can safely say that the entire advantage goes to the hunter if the booster has to be on grid. I guess you could try to be clever and keep the booster way at range and aligned, but how long can you stay aligned before you go off grid and have to warp back to a starting point, interrupting your boosts? The Rorq also has to activate a module for max boosts that prevents movement I believe. (never flown that, just an orca). How are you going to break inty tackle with unbonused drones before the dps gets there to kill the booster? Maybe give the Orca Algos-like drone stats and we can talk...

So I spent a year learning about EVE Online PVP, watching vids, training skills and the solution to mastering solo is apparently "Get Links."

:/ I'm screwed.

I mean, that's seriously discouraging to pilots who can't run links (aka comp can't run two clients, can't afford a link alt cause of money/time commitment etc) and who are just starting out. Especially if they have to fight "true solo"...not because they're hardcore, but because they can't fight any other way.

I'm starting to dislike this game. :/

As for the boosts/links, put them on KMs please so we know who to avoid without having to guess. (If I see a guy in a Tengu in low I just make a note: "possible links" but that's not very accurate.)

Don't get discouraged. I've been playing six years almost exclusively without links or expensive implants, and while it might be harder, it is also far more rewarding in my opinion. You should look us up in Stay Frosty.

I don't see how the existing crime and punishment system doesn't already cover much of this. If I'm logi and I rep a PvP'er, I get all the same combat flags as the shooter already including limited engagement timers with pilot that got shot by the shooter I repped. They just need to track that info persistently for the killmail. Link ships don't currently get combat flags if all they activate is the link modules, so that might be more complicated since a link is not the same type of effect as a module activated directly against a target.

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